Installing VMware Workstation 9.0.2 on Fedora 19

Posted by KarimElatov on August 15, 2013 Leavea comment (0) Goto comments

I ran into some issues setting up my VMware Workstation on my Fedora 19 install, so I decided to put together all the notes on how I got around them.

VMware WorkStation Installer

After you have downloaded the installer from VMware, you will see the following in yourdownloads folder:

elatov@kmac:~/downloads$ls | grep WorkVMware-Workstation-Full-9.0.2-1031769.x86_64.txt

Make the file executable and runthe installer withsudo:

elatov@kmac:~/downloads$sudo ./VMware-Workstation-Full-9.0.2-1031769.x86_64.txt Extracting VMware Installer...done.You must accept the VMware OVF Tool component for Linux End UserLicense Agreement to continue.  Press Enter to proceed.....Installing VMware Workstation 9.0.2    Configuring...[######################################################################] 100%Installation was successful.

Compile the VMware Workstation Kernel Modules

Before we do that, let’s install all the necessary pre-requisites:

elatov@kmac:~$sudo yum install kernel-headers gcc kernel-devel

After those are installed, try to compile the kernel modules with the following command:

elatov@kmac:~$sudo vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

Initially my compile failed with the following error messages:

/tmp/modconfig-c2Eiux/vmnet-only/hub.c:366:28: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type             jack->procEntry->read_proc = VNetHubProcRead;                            ^/tmp/modconfig-c2Eiux/vmnet-only/hub.c:367:28: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type             jack->procEntry->data = jack;..../tmp/modconfig-c2Eiux/vmnet-only/bridge.c: In function ‘VNetBridge_Create’:/tmp/modconfig-c2Eiux/vmnet-only/bridge.c:331:34: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type       bridge->port.jack.procEntry->read_proc = VNetBridgeProcRead;                                  ^/tmp/modconfig-c2Eiux/vmnet-only/bridge.c:332:34: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type       bridge->port.jack.procEntry->data = bridge;                                  ^make[2]: *** [/tmp/modconfig-c2Eiux/vmnet-only/bridge.o] Error 1make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/modconfig-c2Eiux/vmnet-only] Error 2make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/3.10.4-300.fc19.x86_64'make: *** [vmnet.ko] Error 2

Doing some research I ran into this VMware communities page. Which, in turn, led me to this Arch Linux page. From that page:

VMwaremodule patches and installation
VMware Workstation 9 and Player 5 both support kernels up to 3.9. Any later requires patching of the VMware modules.

3.10 kernels
The call create_proc_entry() has been dropped from 3.10 in favor of proc_create(). This requires patching of the vmblock and vmnet modules that use them. The patches (including the optional fuse patch) can be found here and here:

$ cd /tmp$ curl -O http://pkgbuild.com/git/aur-mirror.git/plain/vmware-patch/vmblock-9.0.2-5.0.2-3.10.patch$ curl -O http://pkgbuild.com/git/aur-mirror.git/plain/vmware-patch/vmnet-9.0.2-5.0.2-3.10.patch$ cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source$ tar -xvf vmblock.tar$ tar -xvf vmnet.tar$ patch -p0 -i /tmp/vmblock-9.0.2-5.0.2-3.10.patch$ patch -p0 -i /tmp/vmnet-9.0.2-5.0.2-3.10.patch$ tar -cf vmblock.tar vmblock-only$ tar -cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only$ rm -r vmblock-only$ rm -r vmnet-only$ vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

And I was running Kernel 3.10:

elatov@kmac:~$uname -r3.10.5-201.fc19.x86_64

Similar patches can be found here and here.After I ran the above commands to apply the patches, the compile went through.

Entering the License Number

At this point I ran vmware from the command line and workstation started up fine. I wanted to enter my license key since the trial only runs for 30 days. I went to Help -> “Enter License Key..” and I saw the following:

I would click on “Enter License Key..” but nothing would happen. I found two sites that ran into the same issue:

• Can’tadd serial code/activate VMware in Ubuntu 13.04

• Fix:Unable to click on Enter license key for VMWare Workstation

Both listed a fix, you can either run this:

$ sudo /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx --new-sn KEY

or you can run this:

$ sudo /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-enter-serial

The latter will launch a GUI,and you can enter the key into it. I used the first method and it worked without an issue.

Launch the VMware WorkStation Virtual Network Editor

I tried to run the Virtual Network Editor from the VMware WorkStation but it wouldn’t do anything. I checked outdmesg and I saw the following:

elatov@kmac:~$dmesg -T | tail -1[Wed Aug 14 18:51:11 2013] vmware-gksu[6702]: segfault at 7fd0bfda24ab ip 00007fd0c4615196 sp 00007fff8df1f608 error 4 in libc-2.17.so[7fd0c44e4000+1b5000]

It looks like vmware-gksuis crashing. vmware-gksu is a utility that comeswith workstation and it’s gui to alleviate user’s privileges(kind of likesudo). Also checking out theapplication logs (under /tmp) I saw the following:

elatov@kmac:/tmp/vmware-elatov$tail vmware-apploader-9319.log2013-08-14T19:07:48.046-07:00| appLoader| I120: GLib: glib_minor_version: Comparing 36 with 362013-08-14T19:07:48.046-07:00| appLoader| I120: libglib-2.0.so.0 validator returned true.2013-08-14T19:07:48.046-07:00| appLoader| I120: Marking libglib-2.0.so.0 node as SYSTEM.2013-08-14T19:07:48.046-07:00| appLoader| I120: -- Finished processing libglib-2.0.so.0 --2013-08-14T19:07:48.046-07:00| appLoader| I120: Marking libgksu2.so.0 node as SHIPPED.2013-08-14T19:07:48.046-07:00| appLoader| I120: Marking libgtop-2.0.so.7 node as SHIPPED.2013-08-14T19:07:48.046-07:00| appLoader| I120: Marking libXau.so.6 node as SYSTEM.2013-08-14T19:07:48.689-07:00| appLoader| W110: Child process was terminated with signal 11.2013-08-14T19:07:48.689-07:00| appLoader| W110: Unable to load dependencies for /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libvmware-gksu.so/libvmware-gksu.so2013-08-14T19:07:48.689-07:00| appLoader| W110: Unable to execute /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-gksu.

It saw showing the same issue,vmware-gksu was having issues. From thesegfaultwe can see that we are having an issue with libc. I found a lot of people mentioning that there are a lot of bugs withvmware-gksu and libc. Here is one example. Manually elevating my privileges withsudo worked for me. So I ran this:

elatov@kmac:~$sudo vmware-netcfg

and then I saw the following:

I was able to make all the changes that I needed.